(From a recorded conference, with some slight editing) 

What I want to go over with you are a few points related to prayer, the mystery that prayer is. Sometimes we think prayer has to catch us up into, transport us into some ethereal joy or some semi-mystical experience, and if if this doesn't happen to us in prayer then there's something wrong with the way we pray. Prayer, however, is something much more simple. There are some people, special people with special graces, who have those experiences, but prayer is something much simpler, much deeper. We can get lost in external manifestations, thinking prayer all consists in them, while they are just the fruit of everything else that's going on inside, the true core of prayer.  

Prayer is something that we truly tend to by nature. Why do I say that that we tend to it by nature? Well, when we're in a tight situation, people always think of praying, and when they think there's a possible danger lurking a prayer seems to come unbidden to their lips. As we were getting on a plane recently, I was going down the aisle and I heard somebody saying, "Oh, we're safe on this one." Because there's a priest on board, right? Sometimes you feel like saying to people, "Well you'd be safer if you went to Confession, because I've got to die someday too, and there's nothing written in scripture that says priests are not going to die in planes."  

There was an occsion when we were landing at night and the pilot couldn't tell whether we had any landing gear down or not. While we were circling and they were making all the arrangements, one of the crew asked me if I could help look after the back door of the plane. I wonder why they picked the priest for the back of the plane, maybe they were expecting it to hit the back end first or something. So I said, "Sure," a chance to learn something new anyway, and I was told, "You look out here, and if we hit the ground in an unusual fashion, first of all look through the little window in the door and if you see flames on the other side don't open the door, right? If you don't see flames, open the door and get out and let everybody else out too." But when we landed safely, as we were taxiing towards the gate, they brought out the champagne, uncorked it and gave everybody on the flight a glass. And then when they came along to the priest they said, "Oh, well we knew nothing was going to happen because we had a priest on board." At the end so many people said it that I asked the pilot, "You think they'll give me your pay-check as well since I landed the plane so safely?"  

Prayer Is Natural, Isn't It?  

So we're trying to pray, prayer is something that comes naturally. When we're in a tight spot is when suddenly things come into perspective, and we know where we have to turn for the type of help we need. So in that sense it comes naturally, but outside of these occasions it doesn't seem to come all that naturally, it seems to be somewhat more difficult, often a drudgery. "Don't tell me we've got to go to pray again?" How many times when you were a kid and it was time for the family Rosary... were you just jumping for joy? Or now when you have a headache, or a stomach-ache? There's that side to us as well, as human beings: we always have to make an act of the will to start to pray, and I think we have to go through many more stages of purification for prayer finally to be the joy that they say it should be for us.  

Right now it's something that we do that's an absolute expression of our utter faith. And you know I think it's an expression of our love for God. We're not so emotionally or physically attracted to prayer, but yet we actually do it. We say much more to God when we make that act of will than if it was just as attractive as going, say, to Disney World. So we have that little paradox about prayer, it's something we tend to naturally, and at the same time something that we naturally avoid, and yet when we do it, even with mixed feelings. it can be a beautiful act of love.  

How do we go about praying, what is the essential element in prayer? Well, there are two types of prayer: there are the prayers that we say, and then there is mental prayer. It's not so much that you're praying out of a book; you're receiving ideas, you're turning those over, you're letting the Holy Spirit enlighten you. So there are two basic types of prayer: the prayer where you have a set formula and you repeat the words, and the prayer where you don't. Let's have a look at each of those two types of prayer and see what place they have in our lives and how we can do them better.  

Vocal Prayer  

The first and obvious type of prayer is when we "say prayers". You get up in the morning and your mom says, "Did you say morning prayers yet?" She's referring to the ones she taught you when you were small that say, "I believe in you my God... Thank you for a new day" and so forth, then your night prayers as well. The most favorite prayers of our lives are those we come back to, and the ones we more spontaneously pray are the ones we learned when we're kids at the side of the bed there, when we were twisting and turning... and mom was patiently trying to teach us to pray. Also the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, the Our Father, those set prayers. Those prayer books that we have that are a little bit more dog-eared, our prayer card that has on the back of it a prayer that we for some reason very much like more than others. These prayers, they're called vocal prayers because we say them with our voice. What are they about?  

You could say that there's a lot of prejudice against these types of prayers because people will tell us, "Well, they're just formulas, they don't mean anything," or, "They're no use if all you do is just repeat them and they're not really expressing," and that you say so many things in those prayers that you really don't mean. I think it is the Arabs that have a wonderful proverb: "There's nothing as terrible as an answered prayer." There's nothing as terrible as an answered prayer. Why so? Because very often in prayer we ask for things - especially when they're prayers that are already made out - we ask for things that we might not want. We pray the Our Father every day, don't we, many times a day, and if we pray the Our Father we say, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Just imagine one day, as you were praying the Our Father, God suddenly changed his usual way of being, changed the rules of the game and at that moment appeared to you in a flash of light and said, "Stop! It's a deal! You've said it every day for the past eighteen, twenty, twenty five years, it's a deal! Okay, show me your hand, what have you got in there? Have you been forgiving everybody? You put the cards on the table face up, and let me see the way things are going." What would happen to us? Well, you'd have to shuffle and deal again, there was something wrong with the hand that they gave me, can I change three cards? Or we'd just fold, we say, "Just take the pot, don't look at the cards, we'll start a new game."  

Because very often in those prayers we ask for things that we know we should be asking for, but that we really don't want. That is the great value of those prayers. Not that we ask for things we don't mean, but that they teach us the proper things to ask for. When we pray those prayers I think we should pray them not as things that we say, but as asking God to show us the things we should be praying for. Do you remember how we got the Our Father, how the Our Father came about? Jesus prayed, and when he was finished, Peter said, "Lord, why don't you teach us to pray too, just like John taught his disciples?" And Jesus said, "Yes, well when you pray, this is what you should be praying: 'Hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven; give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation.'"  

And it was almost as if Our Lord picked all the things we do wrong in our lives, and told us to pray for the opposite. As if he were reading our reaction to things and said, "Always bless God, never take his name in vain, hallowed be thy name. Always seek the things of God and not yourself, thy Kingdom come. Always seek God's will and not your own will, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Depend on God, know that everything comes from God and not yourselves, ask God to give you today your daily bread," and because we're so self-centered and we never forgive others, "Ask God to forgive you your sins as you forgive others so you can learn to be like God," and because we want to so often dally with temptation, we kind of look for it, we know we shouldn't, but there's something about it, our curiosity "Lead us not into temptation, we should avoid that."  

Prayer Transforms Us  

So when we pray these prayers properly, they are tremendously valuable because they do what prayer is supposed to do to us. The real thing about prayer is that it's not just an action we go through: it transforms us, we're different after we pray than we are before we pray. Just look at your reaction to people. Say you have two friends. One who says he doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in the Church, doesn't believe in the soul, doesn't believe in the future life. And then you've got another one who's very pious, who comes from a good family. He goes to Mass every Sunday, he's gone on retreats. And then you compare the actions of those two people. One doesn't believe in God, doesn't pray, doesn't believe that he has a soul, and he goes out and lives it up, you say, naturally, right, what else can we expect? But if the onel who prays goes out and lives in the exact same way we say that there is something wrong, right? Why do we say there's something wrong? Because we expect the person who prays and who believes in God to behave differently. Prayer is supposed to make us different, make us able to do things that other people who don't pray can't do; make us able to make choices other people who don't pray can't make or make wrong. Make us able to love others more than we love ourselves, whereas the person who doesn't pray we don't expect him to love others, we expect him to use others; we expect open contracts with that person that we can modify at any moment, because they seek themselves.  

So prayer is more than an exercise in fervor, more than receiving grace. Prayer is something where we ask God to come into our lives so that he can change us. The whole point of prayer is in order to change, not to be the same. And we think, we tend to think, that prayer is feeling something, that prayer is feeling wonderful, all caught up in a wonderful emotion of love for God. Prayer is to make us different. Prayer is to change us. So if we try to mean those vocal prayers, they gradually change us. It's just the fact of saying to God, "forgive me my trespasses," even if we don't finish off the phrase, even if we say it without realizing what we say. The fact that we ask God for pardon means that we recognize that we're sinners, that we could have done it otherwise. If you're twenty three years old, you don't go to God and say, "God, I ask you for pardon for being twenty three years old," because there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except wait for another year and then you'll be twenty four. There's nothing you can do about it.  

"I'm sorry Lord for having been born in California." There's nothing you can do about it. When people ask me if I'm Irish I say, "Yes I am, but it's not my fault. Somebody else is to blame for that, don't look at me." But when we ask God for pardon it must mean that we can change, there's something that we could have and should have done differently. So prayer brings us down to that, and prayer is in order to help us change.  

When I was going to school, our favorite mode of transport was the bicycle, and of course there were clips that you put on your pants so that you wouldn't get tangled them in the chain. And I remember we were halfway through the first class one morning and a kid comes into the classroom, and comes up to the teacher, and tells the teacher that the bus was late - that was his excuse for getting in late to class. And the teacher says, "Come again? I didn't hear you. " And he explains that the bus was late, and the teacher makes him say it three or four times. And the kid is getting a little nervous, he can't figure out what's wrong. And some of the fellows up front were beginning to giggle as well, they saw what was wrong: he still had the clips on his pants from riding his bicycle. So when we pray to God, sometimes we can imagine a guy praying and say, "Well, why doesn't he answer our prayer the first time? Why doesn't he say, `Okay, go to your place,' because there's something wrong." And he wants us to say it again, and realize the things that don't fit. And then we say it a third time, and a fourth time, and a fifth time, and suddenly it begins to dawn on us. "I love you above all things and I will give my life for you," St. Peter said to Jesus, "I'll give my life for you." And he says, "Will you?" And Peter doesn't hesitate and says, "Yes, all the others will run away, I won't run away." And he didn't take the hint, and then it happened to him afterwards.  

And then with the difference in Peter after the resurrection. I think it's beautiful when you look at it. Our Lord says, "Peter, do you love me?" "Yes, I love you." And Our Lord says, "Peter, do you love me?" And Peter says, "Yes, I love you." And Jesus says a third time, "Peter do you love me?" And Peter, the gospel says "Peter grew sad." And Peter has started understanding himself and asking, "I wonder why he's saying this," and then Peter said, "Lord, you know all things, you know all things, you know that I love you." I think what went through Peter's mind is he kind of connected with what happened before and when Christ said a third time, "Do you love me," Peter probably said, "Maybe he knows something about me that I don't know." And that's why Peter got sad, because maybe I'm going to let him down. And that's when he put his total trust in God.  

So our prayer is like that; we repeat the same prayers over and over again, but it is in order to learn. "Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen." We pray it over and over again, and what does God want us to realize? That we need Mary's help, that we need God's help, we're just poor sinners and life is going to end. Has it sunk in, then, with all the times that we've said the Hail Mary? Some people would say, "Oh you're always praying the same thing over and over again, the silly Rosary, fifty times the Hail Mary. You pray it once and you mean it, that's enough." Still you could say, yes, with normal people that would be enough, but I'm a little slow. So that's why God gave me the Rosary, it was made for people like me. And all the other vocal prayers that we have, we've got to pull out of those prayers everything that there is in there that they have to tell us. Let's go through some of the ones just so we can be sure we know what we're talking about, other vocal prayers that we have.  

The liturgy, the Mass, is a said prayer. There are parts that vary, but it's something that's ready-made, you read it, you don't invent it. So obviously if we follow what's being said, and try to adjust to what's being said... There's one phrase that always strikes me. "We thank you God for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you. " Did that ever strike you? Every day we say Mass and in one of the Eucharistic prayers we say that: "Thank you for counting us worthy to stand before you. " God has given us his baptism, he's given us so many graces, if we are not worthy, well, we try and fix that, right? God has done his part; we've got to correspond. So if you start looking at the prayers we say, even the most normal ones, there's so much in them that we can go over, that can help us, and we can actually change. The whole purpose of prayer is to change us. Change us from the self-centered, vain, superficial people that we are, into people with a little more depth, a little more sense of perspective, a little more thinking of other people.  

Prayer is to change. The purpose that we pray is to change us. We need prayer in the morning, and we need prayer in the evening. We need to do those prayers so as to make the changes we need in our lives, so as to know what we should change. So that's one type of prayer. It's very rich, and those who are more into spontaneous prayer may tend to downplay it, but even though the spontaneous prayers, the meditation that we talk about now is important to cultivate, there is so much to learn from the prayers that are already written, even the simplest prayers where we can go back to them again and again.  

Changing Us Little by Little  

There are things that we do without thinking, and one of them that caused, I don't want to call it a shock, but a "revelation" that I had was a very simple thing altogether. Before I was ordained, I was doing my internship in Mexico and one day Father Maciel asked me to take a couple important people around and show them a little bit of Mexico City. We walked around the cathedral in Mexico City, and going around the back, the center behind the big choir area, there was a small chapel, and as we went by we saw that they were in Mass. And of course right away you recognize what part of Mass it is, and it was after the Consecration. These two people that I was with, both doctors, were agnostics. An atheist is a person who's against God, an agnostic is one who says, "I don't know if God exists or not. I respect religious people, but I don't believe it, but I might be wrong." That's the name for it, a very scientific, hands-off kind of point of view.  

As we went around the back we were having an interesting conversation. I told them about the history of the cathedral and when it was built and the things that happened there, and a few of the particulars. As we went around the back, passing the Mass a little past the Consecration, I just automatically made a genuflection as I passed by. And as I was making the genuflection it suddenly struck me that these people had no idea what I was doing. What do you do if you're walking along talking to somebody who seems perfectly sane and suddenly he goes down on one knee? "He threw out his ankle or what?" So I kind of sheepishly said to them, "Well, we Catholics believe," and it was just as I was saying this, the enormity of what I was about to say struck me. It came to me, this is actually what we believe. We Catholics believe that on the altar after the Consecration it's not bread, it's actually God himself, in person. You say that to a person who doesn't know if God exists, right?  

But I was born into a Catholic family, I never missed Sunday Mass all of my life, brought up with First Holy Communion, Confirmation, everything, altar boy, you name it. I joined the seminary straight out of high school. A religious person you could say. I'm giving you the good side of the story, right? I was twenty five years old at this time and I'd been in eight years in the seminary and suddenly it struck me what we actually believe. I was so used to believing in it that it never really came home to me, what we actually do believe, and how it must sound to somebody who didn't even know if God existed, if he exists. That's the Son of God himself, even if all you see, or taste, or touch is bread. That's why we've got to pray over and over again, because there are certain things that are there that we just don't see, just don't penetrate.  

We need to go, and it's that moment of grace when it sinks into our soul, a revelation, and life is not the same afterward as it was before. That's why we need these simple prayers and we shouldn't be afraid to go back to them, and we should never feel while we're saying them that it's a lesser type of prayer. We should always ask God, "Open up my soul to what I'm actually saying," and then to ask for the gift of believing, accepting, acting on that. So these types of prayer, the said prayers, are very important because they're usually express the experience of people much closer to God than we are, the experience of the Church which it accumulates over time and expresses in these traditional, vocal prayers.  

Another form of vocal prayer are hymns, songs. You know we sing them in Church to God, when we praise God. "Oh most Holy Trinity, Undivided Unity, Holy God, Mighty God." Those are prayers and as we sing them they are teaching us about God. So the only thing we have to make sure is that we don't just pray those prayers routinely, we don't just rattle them off. It can happen to us, after all. I remember when we were small my mother used to take us to a perpetual novena on Mondays, and it certainly felt perpetual to a kid because it used to seem endless, it kept going on Monday after Monday this Novena of the Miraculous Medal. And there was a booklet of prayers, but we'd gotten to know them since we were small, even before we could read, I think, because we'd been going along every Monday night. So you had the prayers all by heart, and I remember the first time I actually read the prayerbook, and parts were not what I imagined they were at all.  

I heard two first Confessions a few days ago, a six-and-a-half-year-old and a seven-and-a-half-year-old. Very nice, they come in, you help them, and they're going to make their first Holy Communion afterwards. It's wonderful the things that they say in the Act of Contrition, they've got basically what it sounds like, but the connections are not really there yet and out of one word they make others. It reminds me of the kid who was in school, and it was coming up to Christmas and teacher says, "Okay, now I want you all to draw the cave of Bethlehem. So you think of it and then draw it." They were small kids, they drew their stick figures and all that, and would explain, "This is the ox, this is the lamb, this is the donkey, this is Mary, this is Joseph, and this is Jesus." And then the teacher comes to one boy and he had drawn an enormously big, fat man in the back. the teacher is curious, who is he?" "Oh, that's Round John Virgin." Well, some of our hymns are like that. We haven't got the message yet.  

So we just need to break that barrier in our prayer of what we're used to and see actually what they mean. Those are external prayers, very, very valuable, and when you find it difficult to pray it's always very easy to go back to those set prayers. Maybe you want to pray, you want to spend some time with God, you're all upset, something has happened, whatever, there's been some sort of a tragedy. What do you do? You don't try to think, you can't, you just start saying the prayers that you already know. You say the Rosary, you say the Hail Mary, you say Our Father's and they get you back on track. So these prayers are wonderful and we should never underestimate them. We should just try to make sure that we know what we're saying, and mean what we're saying.  

Mental Prayer  

I'll just be very brief about the other type of prayer. The other prayer, spontaneous prayer or meditation, rather, is when we put our thoughts into it. The type of prayer you are doing in this retreat is meditation, in which you pick an idea, you pick a thought, or you pick a scene from the gospel, and you look at that, you think about it, you think about the implications, and you draw the conclusions and you make your resolutions. The first type of prayer, the prayers, is very good, they're very necessary. I think that this type of prayer, meditation, is also very necessary if we're going to progress at all. And it's something that we tend to do also if we are beginning to develop a certain habit of prayer; we almost spontaneously to enter into it. You might start praying the Rosary and find yourself thinking just a little bit longer about the mystery itself.  

We're not distracted, we're not thinking about other things because just thinking about the mystery we've probably just stopped the Hail Marys, we're just looking at it... Christ suffering on the cross in that moment means more to me and I think about it a little bit longer and I let it sink in. Or Christ's birth, or the Assumption, or whatever of the mysteries we're meditating on. Or after Communion, when we receive Communion there is a time of silence, we might start saying a prayer we remember but then go into our own words, or talk to Christ without words. Or when Mass is over and we stay on just a little bit longer just to be with Christ. This is a more meditative type of prayer, more personal prayer, mental prayer. We're thinking over something, and we're trying to work through something with God. I think it's a necessary complement of the other type of prayer. We pray our vocal prayers, our regular prayers in the proper fashion it's going to lead us to look for these times of meditative reflection.  

Scripture meditation is like this, where we read a passage of scripture, and then we just stop and we think about it. How does it apply? What does it mean? What's God trying to tell me? And, well, what can I learn from this? This is a whole second area of prayer.